NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Attending a special asthma camp
can help children improve their asthma management skills, a new
study shows. However, more than one third of the children still
had poorly controlled asthma, despite being under a doctor's
care.

"I think some of what we saw was just parents accepting
that kids miss school, kids miss sleep at night, kids can't
participate in sports and certain activities," lead
investigator Dr. Michael J. Welch, at the University of
California, San Diego School of Medicine, told Reuters Health.

He added: "Asthma's very controllable, treatable. "These
kinds of impacts on people's lives don't have to really take
place."

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Welch and his team evaluated 1,783 children attending 24
different asthma camps. There are about 120 asthma camps
nationwide sponsored by the American Lung Association (ALA),
and nearly 10,000 children attend them each year, the
researchers note in their report.

Camp attendees have a mix of various socioeconomic
backgrounds. Welch noted that ALA makes an effort to reach out
to children living in poorer neighborhoods.

All of the children had their diagnosis confirmed by a
physician and a physician was required to fill out portions of
the application, "so that it can be safely said that all the
children in this survey were being followed by a physician,"
the researchers write in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma &
Immunology.

However, 37 percent of the children had inadequately
controlled asthma. Among children who had used health care
services in the past year, 44 percent had one or more emergency
department visits, 10 percent were hospitalized at least once,
and 76 percent required unscheduled visits to the doctor's
office to treat asthma flare-ups.

Six percent of all children in the study had missed more
than 2 weeks of school in the previous year. On average,
children in the study woke up twice a week due to asthma
symptoms.

Children who previously attended asthma camp had fewer
visits to the emergency department and the doctor's office, as
well as fewer hospitalizations, than those who hadn't been to
an asthma camp before. Veteran camp attendees also had better
asthma management skills and were more likely to use
medications to control their asthma.

The findings show that camps can help children with asthma
and their families to manage the disease more effectively. "At
least what we can do is instill in parents an expectation that
their kids can do better," Welch said.

For more information on asthma camps, go to the Consortium
on Children's Asthma Camps' Web site at
http://www.asthmacamps.org/asthmacamps/.